The one area that is mostly overlooked by young talent who strive to have a dream job in music when they grow up is composing music for movies.  Film composers, as they are properly titled in the “biz,” are responsible for every piece of instrumental music (properly called “film score” in the biz) you hear throughout any movie you see on the silver screen.  And a lot of you seeking jobs in the music field might not know that many film composers started out as musicians in popular bands throughout the years, such as Danny Elfman, who came from the band Oingo-Boingo, and then went on to score the film “Good Will Hunting.”  Also Stewart Copeland, who started out playing with The Police, has scored many movie blockbusters like Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street.”  Even John Williams, who has scored all of Steven Spielberg’s movies, started out in a jazz band!

Not to say that you need to become a rock star first before becoming a film composer.  So, if you’re jamming out in your friend’s basement after school, dreaming of becoming a member in the next huge rock band, just know there are other avenues you can take besides going on tour.  You can set your sights on becoming a film composer right off the bat if that’s your thing.  What you need to do first and foremost is work on your craft; create individual instrumental scores, as much as you can actually, so that you can “compose” your own portfolio.  Just as an actor needs to create a reel, as a writer needs to type up a screenplay or even as a band needs to make a demo record.  Work your craft as hard as you can because as hard as you work, there’s always somebody else out there working even harder to get that next job in music composition.  And now there even are ‘state of the art’ computer programs that transfer your sound to sheet music within minutes; of course you’ll still have to know how to read and write sheet music!

Once you have a demo tape sampling your film scores, you need to hit the Hollywood pavement!  Go out and make connections (properly called “networking” in the biz) ‘til you find some valuable leads to the right people to listen to your music.  You may have to take a few small paying jobs on some indie films to get your start in the business and build a filmography of movies that have used your own original scores – you may even have to work for free on some student film to get your name out there!  But, if you want it bad enough, if you’re dreaming of it bad enough and most importantly, if you work smart and hard at it bad enough, you will succeed.  Every talent in every area of the music business is just waiting to be discovered by the next huge producer – you just have to play it right and show your work every way you can to get that film composer job you’ve always wanted!